


Space Case

by dweeblet



Category: Danny Phantom, Warframe
Genre: Gen, Infested Danny, Isolation, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweeblet/pseuds/dweeblet
Summary: Not quite consumed but too sick to stay human, Danny only escaped death by choosing exile instead. And yet—“God, you look like hell.”
Comments: 26
Kudos: 110





	Space Case

**Author's Note:**

> Niche crossover is niche but it exists now.

Danny stalked the empty halls of the Grineer galleon in an endless, patternless patrol. It meant almost nothing, but routine was crucial and familiar, something to cling to in the bottomless dark. The hive thrummed around him, the flesh of his infested brethren having long since overtaken the hull. The stale air was thick with spores and the stink of rotting flesh, humid and heavy. He lifted his head at the sound of shuffling feet on the fungus-covered floor, unsheathing his mandibles and rattling them together in a crude proclamation. 

( _ I’m one of us and I don’t want to fight but if you started one I’d win.) _

Most infested drones backed off immediately when pressed, recognizing his dominance in their primitive minds. Luckily they were squishy and easy to kill, so even if one or two stepped out of line, the rest of the swarm generally learned to keep a wide berth. Even the Juggernauts had learned better than to tangle with something as clever as Danny was, at least in comparison. Not this one: it just quickened its pace. By the sound of its unsteady footsteps, Danny figured it was one of the upright ones, either a runner or leaper. He cocked his head, straining his ears to hear better from around the bend.

The sounds grew closer, and Danny tensed, alien instinct singing through his blood. Most of the others would have sensed his strength and run by now, so it looked like this one was going to put up a fight. He felt thick, sticky saliva begin to ooze from his mandibles, venomous quills standing erect in a line down his backbone. When the steps came merely an arm’s length away, Danny bunched his legs and pounced, swinging his lean body around the corner.

He struck his target hard, ragged fingernails scrabbling at thick synthetic armor. It was smooth like hide, but tough, and his bare hands made no headway. His foe took the chance to buck him off and he rolled, throwing out one leg to knock his enemy down. Danny’s grimy boot made bruising contact with flesh.

Then he stopped. 

The cry that came from his opponent was not the screechy yowl of an infested beast, but the yelping shout of—no. Really?

—a human being? Danny relaxed somewhat, skittering out of reach and tipping his head owlishly at the girl sprawled out before him. 

She was dressed in a skintight hazard suit, ragged skirts spilling around her thin hips and bunching around the tassets at her thighs. Heavy combat boots covered her feet and a high-collared Grineer-style suit crept up her neck, sealing into a bulky gas mask that filtered the spores from the air and obscured most of her features. Her visible skin was fair, but streaked with grime, brilliantly colored eyes wide with fear behind her filmy goggles and framed by straight black hair.

She didn’t move. They stared at each other for a long, awkward moment before Danny remembered his mandibles, slowly tucking their serrated edges safely back into his cheeks. He wiped the green slime off his chin and onto his bare wrist, sheepishly swallowing what he could before dropping into a frog-crouch before the girl.

Danny hadn’t spoken conversationally with real people since he was fourteen. ( _ Holy shit, _ ) he choked, but it came out wrong, lost beneath a strange wet rattle. His voice was raw and hoarse after such extended misuse, but the smooth tones of his native tongue, even so butchered, were bound to be like a salve against the wound. He tried again with a little more success, but it hurt. “You’re  _ actually _ h-h-human!”

A repetitive huffing sound escaped his throat, and he couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. His eyes stayed dry—that crying reflex had died sometime during the start of his second year adrift, he thought.

The girl looked him over, disbelieving. “What the fuck,” she said around the respirator, pale eyes wide. “That’s new.” She squinted, tipping her head, and Danny reflexively mirrored the motion. He followed her hand very slowly to the pistol at her hip as she went on muttering. “A sleeper strain?”

Dismayed, Danny grumbled, “I’m right h-h-here.” He glanced quickly to the name stamped onto the shoulder of her suit, sucking in a whistling breath to try this one more time. It hurt his throat like gargling broken glass but he managed a wheezing, “Ma-anssson.”

“Oh,” she said, blinking stiffly. Looking him over, processing, then seeming almost mortified. “It… can read—you can read?!”

He nodded eagerly and rose from his crouched position. He smiled wide enough that his mandibles threatened to unsheathe, so hard it almost hurt, and the quills on his back quivered with excitement.

“And you can understand me?”

He was still a little disappointed at not being able to talk freely, but Danny found that unhappiness was by far overshadowed by growing hope. He chattered without words and nodded again, mustering a breathy “yes!”

“Are you actually human under there? God, you look like hell.” Danny extended a hand to help her up and she took it, wincing at the strain on her bruised ribs. “This is so fucked. Does it hurt?”

Danny shook his head, but gestured to her side. “Do you?” He hoped he hadn’t gotten her too injured.

Manson hesitated. “Not much,” she said at length, seeming to come to some kind of conclusion. “Might be smart to look at it soon, though.” 

“I h-h-have a safe place.” He crept up one rotten beam, hoisting himself with both arms and legs and clinging upside down to the slimy metal ceiling. “Coming?”

She stared, glancing up and down the pole and the fungus-covered walls. “I can’t climb that,” she said matter-of-factly, and Danny grinned sheepishly down at her. He had forgotten that she lacked his experience.

“Can I lift you?” At the girl’s hesitant nod, Danny hung by his knees over the ledge, wincing at the sensation of ragged metal on the insides of his legs, poking through the remaining synthetic hazmat suit that covered his lower body. He grabbed Manson’s wrists, and she grabbed his, and with monumental effort he brought his body up until she could hold the edge with her small gloved hands.

Panting, she threw a leg up and over, splaying awkwardly across his calves on her back. Danny withheld a laugh at her exhaustion, pulling his torso up and getting to his feet in one fluid motion. The girl just gawked at that.

He was sure that she was notably athletic for a normal human, but her pace still felt slow to Danny, who was used to leaping, swinging, and crawling the most efficient route to his goal. Apparently normal people could not cling to walls like he could, and a small part of him felt guilty for forgetting such a retrospectively obvious thing.

Danny helped Manson over the last gap, settling into the safety of his lair. He crawled under one ruined shelf to retrieve his lighter, promptly starting a small fire in the charred little pit at the approximate center of the room. The smoky heat felt good to him, and he closed his eyes to breathe it in, squatting comfortably before the flames.

“The others don’t like it,” he explained at the girl’s questioning look, still never moving or looking away from the fire. “You’ll be safe.”

“Okay,” she breathed, and sat down with crossed legs beside him. At length, she finally asked the question:“Wha—err, who are you?”

For a moment, he almost chittered ( _ half-half whelp, _ ) as the dumber infested liked to call him, then reached for ( _ little creeping phantom thing) _ but he stopped himself and managed to blurt out a “Fenton!” followed by a softer, more sheepish, “Danny. Danny Fenton.”

“Fenton?” The girl echoed. “Like, scien— _ the _ pioneers of infestation biology, the Fenton family? The ones working on the attenuated vax?”

He nodded numbly.

“And you—you’re their youngest kid? Their dead son?”

Danny made a face, but nodded anyway. “I wouldn’t call me dead,” he said, a little bitterly. “But I would be if I h-h-hadn’t left.”

Manson furrowed her brow. “What do you—why?”

He glared at her with toxic green eyes, baring his mandibles halfway before he remembered who he was talking to. “This h-h-happened before I,” he made air quotes with his fingers, scowling. “‘died.’”

She leaned away from him, hand hovering over her gun, until he found the wherewithal to pipe down. “How?”

“Lab accident.”

“When?”

“Four years ago.” He scoffed a little. “I’ve been gone for three, anyway. I think. Not sure exactly when I got like this—cycles are a little iffy to track by h-h-hand even on a real planet, let alone on a dead ship like this one.” 

Manson nodded slowly. “Okay.” He could see the gears turning in her head. “But why are you—how did you get this way?”

Danny couldn't help but sigh at her. “Lab accident,” he repeated.

“I know, but… why are you here? What happened,  _ specifically _ ?”

He deflated, resisting the urge to drop his head between his knees. “Early stages of my parents’ research weren’t about finding a cure or preventative measure or anything like that,” Danny explained. “They wanted to use the Infestation as a weapon.”

“Like the Orokin...” Manson shook her head. “They didn't try to use it on  _ you _ , did they? Fucking hell—”

Danny snorted, raising the crest of venomous spines on his back in reflexive defense. “Of course not!” He exclaimed, crossing his arms. “My parents are eccentric, not monsters. The idea was to, y’know, fight fire with fire.” He stopped for breath, growling softly at the uncooperative anatomy of his mouthparts. “They tinkered with a little collection of specimens against a control group. If they could rearrange enough genetic information, the plan was to program a ‘friendly’ strain that could neutralize the real deal when they set it loose.”

“What went wrong?”

“I was an idiot. I wanted to h-h-help, but I was in over my h-h-head. They didn't get it right the first time—it took over a good chunk of our labship before they could contain it. Was gross as all h-h-hell, sticky shit. I got unlucky enough to stumble my stupid ass right into it.” Danny sighed, staring down at his boots. “That’s when my parents decided it was too dangerous to control, so they had to eliminate it instead.”

Manson shifted uncomfortably in place. The scream of a lesser Infested echoed from someplace else in the abandoned rig. “They were going to kill you.”

“Probably.” Danny averted his gaze and crushed a clump of fungal spores under his toe. “They didn’t realize I was still there,” he replied at length, then straightened, smoothing down his spines. “Anyway. What brings you to this h-h-hunk of junk? Don’t imagine this is a great vacation spot, unless everything else got shittier while I was gone—so what’s the dealio? Research? Salvage?”

“Both,” Manson replied. “Just recon for now, but if I found anything we were gonna commission a Tenno to clear the place out so the salvage team could have access. Grineer machinery is crude, but even in the worst case scenario we can melt it down and make new things back at Larunda.”

“Gotcha.” He stared at her over the flames, watching the ruddy tongues of fire dance and lick at the air between them. “So… What’s the verdict?”

She hesitated only minutely, expression faltering so briefly that Danny nearly missed it, but he  _ was _ Infested, and he could taste a faint spike of fear cutting through the muggy thickness of the air. It was almost exhilarating, if only for the fact that he hadn’t been near a living, feeling human in years.

“I think,” said Manson, running a gloved hand over one of the hollow, porous tendrils consuming the wall, “it looks like it’s overgrown too bad. I’m going back empty-handed.”

“That’s pretty shit,” Danny sympathized aloud. He had no reservations in continuing, “But you’re not comin’ back with  _ nothing _ .” She blinked at him and a cheeky grin split his face.

“You h-h-have me.”


End file.
